zombie84 said:But this notion that grain is inherantly bad is not only wrong, it completely misunderstands the argument in the first place.
And I'm not saying it's bad. It's a part of the medium. I get it. I totally do. What I was asking, and you answered, is that if you could have the image without the grain, would you take it? Apparently some DPs wouldn't. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also stated that DPs can choose film stock that has a very fine grain. So by extension, if they needed as little grain in the image as possible, would they not choose a medium that provided no grain if it was available? Since they can have difference levels of grain in the same movie, I can imagine that if they wanted something with nearly no grain, they would take it. And if something was available that gave them the same image without the grain and they didn't want any grain, why wouldn't they take it?
Photographers use chemical emulsions because that was the only way to do it for 100 years.
Hmm, yet they still do it. I wonder why that is? Let me guess, they are all old luddites afraid of change who cling on to what they are familiar with. Yeah, sure.
I know plenty of photographers. The ones that still use traditional film do it because even though it costs them more, they view photography as an art form. They actually don't like the ability to take 100s of pictures on a single shoot, find that killer shot, and then discard the rest. They like to take their time and wait for that one killer shot. They pay for it too. They have to conserve their film and they have to pay all the costs for processing and storage (they don't throw bad shots away). Most of them don't do it for anything more than a full time hobby any more since they can't compete with the photographers who are using digital and don't have the same costs they do. This is what I've heard from photographers and read in photography magazines.
Digital photography is nearly indistinguishable from film, so many photographers have switched to digital.
WRONG!! Maybe to the layman it is.
No, this comes from professional photographers that I know. As of about 5 megapixels, to the naked eye, they could not tell the difference of an 8x10 35 mm shot vs an 8x10 digital shot. They had to use a loop to see the differences. That was 6 or so years ago when I confronted one about his love for digital photography. At the time, there was a slight split between him and other people he knew between film and digital. Film was preferred by some simply because they felt there was more detail, even though it was imperceptible. He had gone straight digital since he had seen side by side comparisons of digital shots and 35mm. They were indistinguishable to him and many others that looked at them.
If a piece of art gets people talking and looks really good, why does it matter if it was done in Photoshop or with brush strokes?
Because if you see the real Starry Night by Van Gough you'd know that what you get in photoshop doesn't even begin to approximate that. Its quite laughable. But hell, using Van Gough is a pretty bold example, go down to an art college and check out any random painting. The photoshop plug-ins weren't meant to replace brush and pigment. They are there for graphic design, for a cheap, quick disposable way of getting "the idea" across that its supposed to be brush and pigment. For photoshop, yeah, its pretty good. For photoshop.
So I'm suppose to judge how good art is by the brush strokes in the painting and not by how it looks? That sounds kind of lame and elitist to me.
HD was made for news. AOTC was shot using a news camera that had a cine lens frankensteined onto it.
Pardon me for saying this, but AOTC is a horrible example to use. Hell, any Star Wars prequel is a horrible example to use. I 100% agree that those movies should not have been shot with "HD cams" simply because they'll never look any better than they do. They are maxed out right now at 1080p. If there's something better 10 or 20 years from now, they'll never look any better. At least with 35mm, they can take the raw 4k scan and give us a 2k HD video (if something like that comes along). That'll never be available for the prequels.
I know all this because I work in the biz. I'm part of the International Cinematographer's Guild and have seen the key years from 2005-2008 when people outside of George Lucas and Robert Rodriguez actually started adopting HD.
One day, HD will solve MOST of its problems. Maybe by 2020. Maybe not. People have already been brainwashed that "HD=good" so it'll happen unless people start smartening up. You see it in the names of products--they'll throw "HD" in the product label to subconsciously make you think its better, even when it has nothing to do with digital video display (hell, everything from printers to blenders to exercise equipment). And they've already been partially succcessful in brainwashing people that the inherant characteristics of HD--clear images with sharp edges--are good; "look at how CLEAN this is! Its not dirty! Its really SHARP! You can SEE everything really clear!" A lot of this has to do with the parallel explosion in high-res video games. So I guess the public consciousness of the layperson is shifting. They want movies to look like their X-Box and they want their expensive plasma TV's that they paid out of their ass for to display like you are looking into a mirror. The film industry is driven by different pressures than other fine art mediums. But most cinematographers have been doing their best to resist this, to slow down the process and, hopefully, drive high-def video into a more acceptable aesthetic before its ready for wide professional adoption. For the average guy, the ease and versatility of video is a welcome trade off, but there's a reason why, when you are spending millions and millions of dollars to produce a film, photographers are deliberately going with chemical emulsions.
I agree with probably all of this. It's even happened with radio. "Listen to us on HD radio 101.1!". The HD doesn't even stand for hi-def, but people think it does.
IMHO, HD for hi-def is good. The more resolution you can get on a screen, the better. If I end up being able to see grain, I'm ok with that. As long as what's there is what's suppose to be there, I have no problem with it. Unfortunately, I'm probably in the minority and this isn't in the same league as the "widescreen problem". You're right that people want a crisp and clear image. Knowing that, it's going to be nearly impossible to convince people that the grain is suppose to be there without going through everything you've mentioned here. People are going to see the "flaws" and get angry.